The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Computer-generated natural effects may provide graphic facsimiles that simulate processes that are governed in reality by physical laws. Such natural effects may include, but not be limited to, the ignition and/or development of a flame from a fuel source; the development of smoke motions; and the development of clouds. Such natural effects may be rendered as graphical frames for use in graphic designs. For instance, a user may desire a graphic rendering of a flame having certain characteristics, including size, color, shaping from wind or air currents, and so forth.
Historically, such renderings have been generated based on manual drawings, such as by manually creating a picture of a desired flame. However, such manual renderings may be time consuming and, for individuals who are not skilled artists, may not appear lifelike. Computer simulations of such natural effects may be utilized by modeling the natural effect from an initial state according to a model of the physical world and incrementally simulating the natural effect until the effect appears in its desired manner. However, such simulations may be resource and time intensive, as rendering, for instance, a flame may involve computing hundreds of simulated frames of the flame in order to reach the desired flame image.
Further, such computer simulations may become exponentially more resource and time intensive if the natural effect is simulated in three dimensions rather than two dimensions. Such three-dimensional simulations may provide a more rich and realistic image of the natural effect than an otherwise similar two-dimensional image, at the expense of each individual image involving many times as much information as a corresponding two-dimensional image.